Adam Davidson Sandblasted Fugu, Estate Briar Pipe, Unsmoked [SOLD]

Description

A graduate of industrial design and of a less formal apprenticeship under Todd Johnson, Adam Davidson has become one of North America’s most renowned artisan pipe-makers. Davidson initially worked with Johnson on his Medici pipes, while also being employed as a refurbisher for one of America’s leading pipe dealers. He then went solo, soon rising among the ranks of the American handmade pipe scene until he arrived at a stature comparable to contemporaries such as Johnson and Jeff ‘J. Alan’ Gracik.

There’s nothing quite like coming across a pipe that makes you think, “okay, that is not what I was expecting.” I first caught a glance of this Adam Davidson from side-on, which led me to assume that it must be a kind of Danish apple in the vein of Lars Ivarsson, or of Todd Johnson, one of Lars’ greatest admirers. It’s only when I picked it up that I realized how wrong I was – so wrong, in fact, that I was off by a whole continent. This isn’t Danish, or Danish-American, in style, but Japanese, or Japanese-American rather. When holding the pipe, you’ll notice that at just about every point in the design, there’s a subtle forgoing of symmetry and parallelism; the bowl is elliptical in shape, but it is deliberately imperfectly so, with its two focal points cutting a line that is slightly off-angle in relation to the shank; both the rim and the end of the shank are, furthermore, slightly slanted, with the former almost lopping to the left side, and the latter leaning forward into the stummel. All of this is very much the point, and nothing has been left to chance – which is, perhaps, the beautiful paradox at the heart of such creations, as it is the trappings of order and necessity that they leave by the wayside.

Anyway, I’ll stop rambling here. The pipe is completely unsmoked, by the way, with an original bowl coating to help ease in its first smokes.

 

Details:

Length: 6.4″ / 162.5mm

Bowl Width: 0.77 / 19.55mm

Bowl Depth: 1.65″ / 41.91mm

Weight: 2.1oz / 62g